Bill Chappell

Bill Chappell is a writer and producer on the Newsdesk, in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.

Chappell's work at NPR has ranged from being the site's first full-time homepage editor to being the lead writer and editor for online coverage of several Olympic Games, from London 2012 to Pyeongchang 2018. His assignments have included being the lead web producer for NPR's trip to Asia's Grand Trunk Road, as well as establishing the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps on NPR.org.

In the past, Chappell has edited and coordinated digital features for Morning Edition and Fresh Air, in addition to editing the rundown of All Things Considered. He frequently contributes to other NPR blogs, such as All Tech Considered and The Salt.

In 2009, Chappell was a key editorial member of the small team that redesigned NPR's web site. One year later, NPR.org won its first Peabody Award, along with the National Press Foundation's Excellence in Online Journalism award.

At NPR, Chappell has trained both digital and radio staff to use digital tools to tell compelling stories, in addition to "evangelizing" — promoting more collaboration between legacy and digital departments.

Prior to joining NPR, Chappell was part of the Assignment Desk at CNN International, handling coverage in areas from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, and coordinating CNN's pool coverage on major events.

Chappell's work for CNN included editing digital video and producing web stories for SI.com. He also edited and produced stories for CNN.com's features division.

Before joining CNN, Chappell wrote about movies, restaurants and music for alternative weeklies, in addition to his first job: editing the police blotter.

A holder of bachelor's degrees in English and History from the University of Georgia, Chappell attended graduate school for English Literature at the University of South Carolina.

Arizona Republican Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County sheriff who became famous for his controversial stance on immigration, has announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, saying he wants to join Congress so he can help President Trump.

Arpaio made the announcement in a tweet on Tuesday, contending that helping Trump was his "one unwavering reason" for running.

Japanese kayaker Yasuhiro Suzuki says his desperation to compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics led him to lace a fellow countryman's drink with an anabolic steroid — and now he's been banned for eight years. Before Suzuki admitted the plot, his rival Seiji Komatsu had been banned.

Komatsu's ban was overturned on Tuesday, after the Japan Anti-Doping Agency found that Suzuki had laced Komatsu's water bottle with a banned substance at the 2017 Canoe Sprint Japan Championships last fall. Komatsu failed a doping test at the event, part of the Olympics qualifying process.

Citing the popularity of Apple's phones and tablets among children and teenagers, two large investors say the company should do more to help parents protect their kids from the risks of digital addiction and the side effects of social media.

Together, California's teacher pension fund, or CalSTRS, and the Jana Partners investment group own more than $2 billion in Apple stock. In a letter to the tech giant's board, they're calling on Apple to give parents options beyond a "binary" system in which tools and functions are either freely available or closed off.

The Trump administration says it will end the temporary protected status that has allowed some 200,000 natives of El Salvador to live in the U.S. without fear of deportation for nearly 17 years, the Department of Homeland Security says.

In announcing the designation's end, DHS Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen also said she's extending it for another 18 months, to Sept. 9, 2019 — a delay that her agency says is to ensure "an orderly transition."

An armed man who stopped an Amtrak train in Nebraska is facing a terrorism charge after the FBI discovered ties to "an 'alt-right' Neo-Nazi group," a cache of weapons and allegations that the suspect, Taylor Michael Wilson, had talked about a desire to kill black people.

Federal authorities have filed a terrorism charge against Wilson, 26, of St. Charles, Mo., who was arrested in October after Amtrak personnel said he entered a restricted area of a train and applied the emergency brake in Furnas County, Neb.

The U.S. economy added 148,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department says, issuing the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate was 4.1 percent, unchanged from November.

Analysts had predicted the Labor Department report would show another month of solid job gains. But it's a sharp dropoff from the revised November result of more than 250,000 jobs.

The city of Fort Collins, Colo., will build a system to deliver "high speed next-generation broadband to the entire community," after its City Council enacted a ballot initiative that voters approved in November. The move comes despite resistance from cable and telecom companies.

Aurora, a startup company led by three veterans of Google, Tesla, and Uber, has signed deals with both Volkswagen and Hyundai with the goal of putting autonomous vehicle technology on the market within three years — and doing so "quickly, broadly and safely."

The partnerships will pair Aurora's sensors and software — its machine learning and artificial intelligence technology — with two companies that together produce more than 15 million vehicles each year.

Self-driving Hyundai models will be on the market by 2021, the company says.

Steve Bannon, President Trump's former chief strategist, once called a now-famous meeting among Donald Trump Jr., campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and a group of Russians "treasonous," according to accounts of an upcoming book.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma's yearlong effort to buy U.S. money transfer company MoneyGram is now over, after American regulators objected to the $1.2 billion deal. Ma's Ant Financial Services Group has dropped its bid for the Dallas-based company.

Announcing the spiked merger, MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes said, "The geopolitical environment has changed considerably since we first announced the proposed transaction with Ant Financial nearly a year ago."

After publishing images of a visit to Japan's "suicide forest" that included footage of a dead body, YouTube star Logan Paul is apologizing — and critics are denouncing both the video and Logan's behavior in it. The video was watched millions of times before he removed it.

South Korea has seized a Hong Kong-flagged vessel under suspicions that it illegally transferred oil to North Korea, in violation of U.N. sanctions. The vessel, the Lighthouse Winmore, was seized one month after it allegedly ferried oil, South Korean media report.

Such ship-to-ship transfers are prohibited by a U.N. Security Council Resolution that was adopted in September, part of a suite of sanctions that target North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs.

A terrorist attack targeted a Christian church south of Cairo on Friday, killing at least nine people, Egyptian officials say. The assailant was apprehended after a gun battle that killed at least one police officer.

In a statement on its Amaq media outlet, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. It said the shooting was committed by an ISIS "security detachment."

"Bitter cold" is gripping a broad swath of the U.S., the National Weather Service warns, with dangerous wind chills and other hazards. Freezing temperatures are common across the Southern U.S. this week; in the North, multiple states report subzero conditions.

States are declaring emergencies and cities are working to extend their shelter capacity. And at all levels, officials are telling people to stay inside unless they absolutely must be outdoors.